Cold World
by Night Rain Illusion
Summary: Some games just aren't meant to be won. Kotonoha may have defeated her enemy, but in the end she's the one that's left all alone with only a reminder of what could of been.


By popular demand and thanks to the new School Days section of FFN, I have decided to share this fic that I wrote some time ago! I don't own School Days. Rated for obvious reasons.

**Cold World**

It took hours to wash the blood from her hair and clothes.

It would take much longer to wash it from her hands.

After the deed had been done, she had slipped away, quickly rushing home with her duffel bag where the murder weapon was currently hidden. She calmly tossed the clothes she had been wearing into the fireplace and took a shower, both relieved and frightened that it was finally over. Sekai could no longer come between them.

She had made sure of that.

* * *

When Kotonoha had come home, discovering her boyfriend lying dead in a pool of his own blood, she had simply stared at it. No screaming. No crying. She calmly set her groceries down on a table and walked over, kneeling and placing a hand over his chest, checking for a sign of a heartbeat. She found none.

She slowly pulled her hand away and stood up as the blood had begun to soak into her skirt.

"She's stubborn, I'll give her that." Kotonoha said as she calmly begun to put the groceries away. It wouldn't of been good to let that food go to waste. Pity too, she had just been about to make dinner for the two of them.

She turned around, looking down at his body. "So, Makoto-kun, do you have any ideas for how to convince Saionji-san that you're my boyfriend and nothing will change that? She doesn't listen to reason and she's being incredibly selfish." she pouted at this. What would it take for Sekai to leave them alone and to quit trying to steal Makoto away from her?

"What should I do?"

She was only greeted with silence, and she watched with a vague morbid fascination as his blood slowly began to turn black.

* * *

An hour or so later, she was waiting for Sekai's arrival. She had sent a fake message from Makoto to her to lure her to the roof of the school.

Where they had first met.

She curled her fingers around the dozuki. It was stained with Makoto's blood from where she had cut off his head. She had shed no tears when she had done so, reminding herself that they would never be separated from each other, no matter what tricks and deception Sekai used against them. Kotonoha was stronger than Sekai gave her credit for, and it would be her undoing.

Besides, he told her that they would always be together. Even in death.

Makoto deserved to be here to watch the curtain fall on the final act of the life of Saionji Sekai.

* * *

When she packed her bags and announced that she was leaving for a few weeks to spend some time alone out on the family boat, her parents and Kokoro-chan didn't question it. It was best to let her have some time alone.

After all, her best friend and her boyfriend died a few days ago.

* * *

She plays the murder over and over in her mind and it's a part of her waking moments. And lately, it's been in her dreams as well. Mixing together in different colors and feelings and sensations.

They weave in and out of her dreams of her first "consensual" time. It was after they had finally gotten back together again. His arms wrapped around her as he pulled her naked body close to his and she relives in the embrace. There's pain when he first goes deep inside of her, but it's gentle, and wanted. Not like that time with the other boy at the festival, who had taken advantage of her in her weak mental state. This time, she was ready for it. It's pure pleasure unlike anything she's ever dreamed of, and it makes her laugh every time she hears the squeaking of the metal springs from the movement. She had never been more happy in her life, for she finally had the boy she loved and everything was going right.

But because of the very person who had hooked them up, and then tore them apart with her lecherous ways, it would be the first, and last time and she is forced to feel other things in order to fill the hole left behind.

Fear. Pain. Betrayal. Murderous Vengeance.

Pure Ecstasy.

* * *

She watches coldly as Sekai chokes on her last breath, a hand to her throat in a vain attempt to stop the flow of blood from the gash in her neck. It comes out in great spurts that splash the ground and Kotonoha's clothes. Sekai collapses on the ground, gasps for air, and then promptly dies, eyes wide and empty.

But they could never be as empty as Kotonoha's.

Kotonoha holds her weapon high, intending to aim for Sekai's stomach.

_"I'm carrying his child!"_

_"This baby is mine and Makoto's, and he has to take responsibility for it!"_

_"I'm really pregnant! I'm not lying!" _

"You just don't give up. You can't let me and Makoto be happy together. And you make up a horrible lie like that in order to take Makoto away from me to keep to yourself. You're selfish and are a terrible friend." Kotonoha says calmly as she kneels down, gently sliding the knife against Sekai's exposed stomach. "I do have to admit that I admire your determination to never give up. You were probably more determined than I was, going to such extreme lengths to get what you want."

She grips it, pressing down hard enough against it to draw blood, smiling unkindly. "But unfortunately, you just weren't determined enough to win your own sick game."

Her eyes flash. "You have lost, Saionji."

Kotonoha rips open Sekai's stomach. Blood gushes out and covers her face and hands. Calmly and with delicate precision, she digs her fingers into the wound and starts pulling her apart. Guts sprawl out on the ground as she carefully searches for what she is looking for. There's a sickening squish as she carelessly tosses aside her stomach and her intestines, trying to locate the supposed lovechild lurking within.

A scowl twists on her lips. As horrible and wrong this is, it was even more so for Sekai to give birth to a child that would belong to Makoto as well, even though he wasn't rightfully hers. After Makoto's death, the idea of a baby with Makoto's eyes existing was inexcusable. Especially if it was Sekai's. It sickened her to imagine that, as it would mean that Sekai had won. And she knew that the baby would have a smirk like it's mother's, and that smirk with Makoto's eyes...

Finally, she concludes that there is no baby. Sekai had indeed made the whole thing up. Kotonoha stands back up, pleased with her work.

"I was right. There's no one inside you."

After a few seconds of silence, she suddenly bursts out in hysterical laughter. Tears threaten to spill down her blood-stained cheeks in both sadness and glee.

She just killed her best friend, who had killed the love of her life.

And personally, she feels more alive than she ever had before.

* * *

"We're finally alone together, eh Makoto?" she says as she hugs his head close to her. It's been a week since the murders. She sits up, smiling down at him cheerfully.

"I think I might check the newspaper I picked up at the news-stand before setting sail." she says.

Kotonoha sets Makoto's head to the side and picks up the nearby newspaper she had set aside. Large capital letters assault her vision.

"MURDER AT SAKAKINO GAKUEN"

She tenses ever so slightly, but she reads.

"The body of a female high school student was found on the roof of Sakakino Gakuen. The body was later identified as that of local resident Saionji Sekai..." Kotonoha stops reading after that, smirking to herself.

Sekai has been defeated once and for all.

* * *

The nightmares begin.

* * *

As her hands start to pull away from the body, a tiny hand reaches up and curls around her pinkie. A deformed baby with Makoto's eyes is staring at her and it tightens its grip on her finger.

_"You wouldn't kill me, would you?"_

She can't speak. How could this be? Sekai wasn't really pregnant. So how could this baby...

_"I didn't do anything wrong. Please don't kill me for my mother's mistakes."_

Kotonoha's eyes go wide and she tries to pull her hand away, but the grip is deadly; she thinks she might lose that finger if she tries to pull away any harder. Her eyes can't leave the babie's. "Let me go!"

Suddenly Sekai's corpse sits up ever so slightly, smiling as blood dribbled from her mouth. The baby is still inside of her, threatening to pull Kotonoha in.

_"Game Over, Katsura-san."_

Kotonoha looks positively mad as she grabs her dozuki and hoists it high. Gritting her teeth, she stabs it into the corpse as hard as she can. "Why can't you stay dead!?" she screamed as she stabbed her over and over again.

The wailings of a baby ring through the air long after she had thrown the weapon as far away from her as possible.

* * *

  
She hasn't slept in days, nearly a week.

She's sickly and pale.

She thought her hair was falling out.

Her eyes were dead.

Kotonoha cradled Makoto's head close to her, running a hand through his hair. There was a slightly rotten odor in the air that she either couldn't identify or simply ignored.

"Makoto-kun, I can't go on like this anymore. What should I do?" she asks him.

As expected, she doesn't receive an answer. Her fingernails dig ever so slightly.

"Why don't you answer me, Makoto-kun?" she asks quietly, her tears falling into his filthy hair.

She sighs dejectedly. She knows that deep down, she's never going to hear Makoto's voice ever again.

"I'm sorry, Makoto-kun. I just...I can't keep living without you. I...love you." She buries her face in his hair, sobbing quietly.

Later that evening, she turned the boat around and began to head back for home.

* * *

  
Despite the police tape marking off the door of Makoto's apartment, she ducks under it and calmly heads for the balcony. She leans against it, feeling the evening breeze play with her hair. She imagines his arms wrapping around her from behind and the two of them smiling as they look out over the city.

She opens her cellphone and looks at the last text message she had received from him hours before she had discovered his body.

"I'll be waiting for you here when you get back. I love you."

She slowly climbs up on to the railing, looking down at the ground. It's a long fall from this height.

But she turns around so that she isn't facing the ground.

Makoto is still waiting for her.

She looks at the cellphone message one last time. "I'm coming, Makoto-kun."

And thus, Kotonoha fell backwards, head first from the ninth floor of Makoto's apartment complex.

About two seconds before impact, she smiled.

The game is finally over.

* * *

  
Dust, glitter, sparkles, blood, rain...  
Everything simply falls apart.  
Tears, laughter, joy, pain, lust...  
Everything gathers toward this one moment.

* * *

  
_Kotonoha plucks at a stray thread on the scarf she is making for Makoto and begins to pull it apart, the thread unwavering and lying in a mess on her bed, destroying a perfectly good scarf in her depression as the thread holding them together begins to become undone._

* * *

Perhaps she is crazy, but not in the way they think she is.  
Crazy for loving someone that cheated on her and used her? Possibly.  
Crazy for her actions? Most likely.  
Maybe it's both.

* * *

_Kotonoha slides down to the ground, silently weeping as Makoto and Sekai make out on the school roof and unaware that she knows what they've been doing behind her back and what distresses her more is that they probably don't care._

* * *

  
Three's a crowd and triangles only make it harder.  
And thus a deadly game of life and death, of lust and love is started to see who wins his heart.

* * *

  
_Kotonoha doesn't care that there's snow gathering in piles on her shoulders and in her hair and that it's near Christmas Eve as she smiles and chats about her day to Makoto, eyes blank as a monotone voice repeats "Your number has been blocked", and is still chatting and telling him how much she loves him and that she'll be waiting for him long after the phone battery has died._

* * *

  
It's a cold world and some games just aren't meant to be won.


End file.
